“How much grandeur
would have been the tumult if Indian societies had survived in full
splendor!”

-- Charles Mann

In
1776, the lauded Declaration of Independence, reflecting the prideful
prejudice of its signers, affronted the Original Peoples [1]
of Turtle Island as “merciless Indian savages.” To open the “New World” to
colonization, it was deemed necessary to demonize the original occupants.

In 1491: New
Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, author Charles Mann
deftly synthesizes new and old information from paleo-societies in the
western hemisphere. Mann takes readers back to the time before Genovese
navigator Christopher Columbus and his crew had touched the shore of
Guanahani, what Columbus arrogantly rechristened San Salvador.
Contemporary images of Original Peoples have been much shaped by the early
impressions of Europeans. Columbus, however, was of oblique mind about the
Original Peoples.

In his log entry of
26 December 1492, he recorded that when one of his ships, the Santa María,
became grounded, the native “king” and his people “displayed great haste
and diligence” to unload the ship and secure its possessions. The people
of Hispaniola even provided accommodation for the crew. Yet the pious
Columbus mused: “I am sure that I could subjugate the entire island --
which I believe is larger than Portugal with twice the population -- with
the men that I have in my company [about 90]. These Indians are naked,
unarmed, and cowardly beyond help.”

“Cowardly beyond
help”? How should the use of arms against an unarmed and peaceful human be
described?

Mann’s 1491
proffers a radically different perspective of what Indigenous societies
were like in the western hemisphere prior to the arrival of Columbus, who
Mann acknowledges was not the first European to venture to Turtle Island.
[2] The book is a well crafted, scientifically and
humanistically based work that makes noticeable effort to incorporate
conflicting views.

The reader is taken
on a journey throughout the western hemisphere and as far back in time as
to the point when humans first reached the hemisphere. Mann delves
illuminatingly into this topic of major academic controversy. 1491
is replete with lively disagreement among researchers that often strays
from the boundaries of refined scholarship -- into condescension to those
who are not academic specialists and into the derogation of colleagues
with competing hypotheses, arising from the unscientific propensity to
protect personal or pet theories.

With personalities
serving as a backdrop, Mann examines the evidence pushing the appearance
of Original Peoples in the western hemisphere back beyond the commonly
hypothesized arrival over Beringia (the land bridge that once connected
Siberia and Alaska) during the last Ice Age about 15,000 years ago. He
challenges the notion that Original Peoples all sprang from one initial
stock of Asians. New evidence indicates Original Peoples arrived in the
hemisphere from at least 33,000 to 43,000 years ago and that the newcomers
arrived in possibly three waves.

Given the large time
frame, it seems only natural to tackle the notion that the hemisphere was
sparsely populated -- a notion contrary to Columbus’s first impression;
for example, the Genoan wrote on 24 December 1492:“The people are
so numerous …” In fact, Mann argues, the pre-1492 population in the
western hemisphere was likely higher than in Europe.

The early population
estimate is important to gain insight into the scope of the genocidal
tsunami that swept over the Original Peoples in the hemisphere. It is out
of this ensanguined calamity that European-imposed entities like Canada
and the United States were sired.

The cause of the
near annihilation of the Original Peoples has often been attributed to
their backwardness; they were unable to repulse the onslaught of Europeans
with steel firearms. Mann argues against this notion, providing evidence
to demonstrate that the Original Peoples had technologically advanced
civilizations to rival any in Europe. The Original Peoples had discovered
“zero,” performed advanced astronomy, and developed precise chronological
measurement by calendar. Indigenous agriscience was pre-eminent (for
example, the development of maize is described as “arguably man’s first,
and perhaps his greatest, feat of genetic engineering”). Terra forming was
carried out to an extraordinary extent: mound building, pyramid building,
canal and irrigation construction, erection of cities, and the astute use
of fire to transform the landscape.

Of the advanced
terra forming by Original Peoples, Mann writes: “Rather than adapt Nature,
they created it.” The prairies of central Turtle Island and the
wilderness of Amazonia are depicted as the purposeful result of fire
wielding by Original Peoples. Indeed, Amazonia is described as one big
orchard!

Enviable forms of
civilization had been developed such as the “vertical socialism” practiced
by the Inka: a currency-less, non-market economy where all the demands of
society were met and where hunger was unknown.

Mann exposes myths
throughout the book. One was that the Inka empire -- the greatest empire
in the world in 1491, bounded the Andes and Pacific Ocean in western South
America -- was easily defeated by the few men and armaments of the Spanish
conquistadors. The downfall was due to many factors but primary was the
extreme susceptibility of Original Peoples to disease brought from the
“Old World.” Particularly lethal was smallpox.

What is the
culpability of Europeans for the sweeping destruction of Original Peoples
by disease, to which they also succumbed in smaller numbers? Mann writes,
“Coming from places that had suffered many such experiences, Europeans
fully grasped the potential consequences of smallpox. … but its actual
impact, which they could not control, was in the hands of God.”

Another myth busted
is the inordinate penchant for public executions in the Triple Alliance
(Mann points out the common designation of “Aztec” is incorrect). Mann
notes that, comparatively, European nations were “more bloodthirsty” when
it came to executing their citizens.

Mann introduces
readers to myriad Indigenous civilizations such as at Norte Chico in what
is now Peru, Tiwanuku and Wari at the high altitude Lake Titicaca, Cahokia
in the Mississippi basin, and that centered on the six-nation confederacy
of the Haudenosaunee in the Great Lakes region.

The great spiritual
leader Deganawidah (Two River Currents Flowing Together) with Ayenwatha
(Hiawatha of poetic and Disney fame) promoted a message of peace and
helped lay the conditions for the uniting of five (later six) nations into
a confederacy. The Haudenosaunee produced theKaianerekowa(Great Law of Peace)
that is said by many to be the template upon which the US Constitution was
based. Mann, however, finds the consensus-based Kaianerekowa with its
universal suffrage and communal ownership as being distinctly at odds with
the US Constitution, which implicitly, from a libertarian viewpoint, is
much inferior to the Kaianerekowa.

Mann’s revisionist
book buttresses an important lesson for us all: that the desire for
knowledge must not be bridled but rather encouraged. 1491
rivetingly documents the efforts of researchers curious and brave enough
to question inculcation, to search for and uncover new evidence, and to
formulate new hypotheses that cast history in a compelling, new light. For
it is through devotion to epistemology and truth, spurred by a healthful
skepticism for established doctrine, that the boundaries of human
knowledge are expanded. It is through skeptical and open-minded inquiry
that enlightenment is attained and humanity may advance.

[1] Mann stays with
the term “Indian” derived from the geographical deficiency of Christopher
Columbus. Mann deals admirably with the loaded words in identifying the
primordial peoples of the western hemisphere and while cognizant of the
deficiencies of the term “Indian,” he stays with it since “every native
person” he has met used the term. Dutch professor of anthropology Harald
Prins writes, “Ethnicity involves self-ascription.” In this vein, I use
the preferred term “Original Peoples” as told to me by Kanien’keha:ka
(Mohawk) warriorSplitting the Sky.
In addition to overcoming Columbus’s ethnic nescience, this term also
solves the problem, as Mann pointed out, that not every Indigenous group
in the hemisphere is “Indian.”
[2] Farley Mowat, West Viking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North
America (McClelland and Stewart, 1965) Without a doubt, Christopher
Columbus was not the first European to reach the shores of “North
America.” Generally, the Vikings are considered the first Europeans to do
so although there is a case for a Celtic settlement of Greenland that
precedes the Vikings. There are at least two credible accounts of Vikings
reaching continental Turtle Island late in the tenth century. Bjarni
Herjolfsson is thought to have reached landfall in Vinland (probably
Avalon coast from Cape Race to Cape St. Francis of Newfoundland) after
riding out a polar nor’easter in 985. In the summer of 982, Erik
Thorvaldsson explored Vestri Obygdir -- what is believed to be the
“Western Wilderness” of Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin Island). Mowat contends that
this marks the first European “of whom any record still exists, to
discover what was for all technical reasons, the continent of North
America.” There is archaeological attestation of a short-lived Viking
settlement at L’Anse aux Meadowsin Newfoundland.